While people have always been a little paranoid, it feels like it’s really kicked into high gear in the past couple of years, particularly around the issue of human trafficking. Middle-class white women in the suburbs now believe themselves to be the group most at risk of being trafficked from a Walmart parking lot in the middle of the day, even though statistics tell us people who are otherwise vulnerable — the homeless, undocumented immigrants, victims of abuse, people dealing with addiction — are most at risk in the U.S.


Remember Pizzagate, which ended in a man firing an AR-15 inside a D.C. pizza place in search of trafficked children? Or the Wayfair conspiracy theory back in 2020 where people convinced themselves that trafficked children were being sold on the Wayfair site through listings for pieces of furniture? An awful lot of people are seemingly completely incapable of being remotely normal about any of this.



Which brings us to the latest example of conspiracy theorizing gone mad, which saw people circulate a video online and whip themselves into a frenzy because the footage showed people riding in the back of a moving truck. The initial caption added to the video speculated that the people in the truck may have been tied up and were possible victims of trafficking.


The Facebook caption accompanying the video read, “I followed them from midtown Atlanta all the way to Gwinnett County almost damn near to Lake Lanier. My ancestors and GOD said don’t stop, give in or give up. Stay with them, we will guide you and protect you along the way #humantraffickingawareness,” because not only are people incredibly paranoid, but they also have intense hero complexes as well.



Fortunately for those of us based in reality, the Gwinnett County Police Department confirmed that the people in the truck, consisting of two families made up of eight people including two minors, were not tied up or in distress; instead, they were traveling from Alabama to Maryland for work. The only issue here was one of people riding in the back of a moving truck without seatbelts. Accordingly, police issued the driver with a citation and transported the occupants to somewhere they could arrange alternate transportation for the rest of their trip to Maryland.


The unfortunate reality of trafficking is that it’s a lot less obvious and lot more insidious than conspiracy theorists would have you believe; stopping it is almost never as simple as bursting into a pizza parlor or tailing a truck for miles. If conspiracy theorists actually cared, they might spend more time volunteering with anti-trafficking groups in their area and less time spreading misinformation on the internet, but they won’t, because volunteering isn’t going to build them a following on social media they can then turn into a semi-lucrative career as an occasional guest on Fox News.